KARACHI: In terms of history, it’s always instructive to be reminded that those who have earned a place weren’t just excellent at their work, but enduringly relevant.

In terms of theatre, it’s always good to have reason to reflect that quality is a meticulous matter of craft, technique and the ability to manage infinite possibilities.

Happily for Karachi, the play that opened on Thursday night at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (Napa) offers both. Put up in collaboration with the British Council, and directed by British director Gregory Thompson, Fasana-i-Ajaaib is an Urdu adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. What is most immediately remarkable — audacious — about this production is that first, it bridges the miles between the Europe of the Bard’s times and superimposes it on Mughal Hindustan, and then it takes another leap to compress the centuries and land in contemporary Pakistan – because if ever there was an issue that ties together disparate centuries and cultures, it is that old and bloodily contested canvas: the female body.

The king of Sicily, Leontes (Fawwad Khan), becomes obsessed with the idea that his beloved wife, Hermione (Aimen Tariq), is pregnant by his childhood friend, Polixenes (Sunil Shankar), king of Bohemia. The first part of the play comprises Leontes’ fevered imaginings of betrayal, ending with the abandoning of Hermione’s infant in the Bohemian wild.

The second part takes place 16 years later, when the lost princess Perdita (Madiha Zaidi), adopted by a Bohemian shepherd (Adnan Jafar), is about to marry Florizel (Kashif Hussain), son of King Polixenes. The latter’s rage at the idea of such a union forces the couple to flee. As things turn out, the conditions for redress presented to King Leontes 16 years previously are met, and the machinations of Hermione’s loyal friend Paulina (Bakhtawar Mazhar) ensure that a satisfactory (of sorts) ending is achieved.

Welcoming the audience, director Thompson said the play was presented in two different styles. In fact, it might be that his technique resulted in one script being split into two different-looking halves of the same whole, to be brought together finally by (another) reconfiguring.

The drama leading to Perdita’s abandonment is set in a Mughal court, effectively couched within the appropriate costume and idiom. In this section, the strong harnessing of emotions by the actors, notably Khan, Mazhar and Tariq, is noteworthy, testifying not just to the advantages of formal training but also their substantial on-stage experience.

At the interval, the scene changes abruptly. The division between the producers and the consumers is erased as the audience members sit on stage, in contemporary Karachi: raucous street scenes complete with Shakespeare’s Fools and Jesters (of which the audience evidently found Rauf Afridi in his role of pickpocket Autolycus particularly entertaining). While all the actors’ work in this section is particularly commendable given that they must navigate around audience members whose movement cannot be predicted, it is again technique that shines: the watchers are now part of the story, complicit to it, germane to the outcome.

The third section of the play shifts the producer/consumer dynamic again, implying that the world can be up-ended: the maligned woman can be vindicated, the wrongs righted – tragedy turned miraculous. With Meesum Naqvi (Camillo) and Mazhar (Pauline) both turning in strong performances, the rent-asunder halves of the play are now whole again.

If Shakespeare wrote this in 16th century Europe, the issues at heart remain disturbingly relevant to the Pakistan of today: women’s role and victimisation in a patriarchal society, crimes such as ‘honour’ killing, and the denial of rights as a result of being relegated, because of gender and/or the added burden of class, to secondary status. When Leontes is holding Hermione at trial, and the formerly honoured and cherished queen stands before her lord and master in a blood-flecked tunic, the king in his anger snatches up a stone with which to batter her. If this raises distressing parallels to the bludgeoning to death of Farzana Iqbal outside the Lahore High Court in May, that only underscores how the challenges have not changed.

In terms of production values, this play reveals light but sure hands at the reins throughout. For both the major sections of the play, British designer Louie Whitemore put together costumes and sets that are minimalist yet effectively opulent, depending on the use of space, proportion and attention to detail to achieve the effect. Her design supports the director’s vision well in being simple to transform, and yet being powerfully evocative.

Similarly, the work of Napa’s Ahsan Bari (original music) and Zain Ahmed (lighting designer) too are lessons in the beauty that can be achieved when less is more, if done competently. The shadowy forest scene where Perdita is abandoned is truly chilling, and depends mainly on clever lighting augmenting Jafar’s performance as the distraught Antigonus. And Bari shows us that a single beat of the tabla or a few sad, lonely, intertwining chords will, when judiciously used, be quite enough.

During the press conference prior to opening night, Thompson explained why he felt that the play was relevant: “After 15 years exploring revenge and its tragic consequences, Shakespeare found a way to change the ending, to save the soul, to find forgiveness.” It could be argued that there are many means of saving the soul, amongst them the interpretive.

The play will be staged nightly up to Aug 31.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014